Chapter 12 - The Perimeter Breach
“Did you get the coordinates?” Agent Harrison demanded, pulling off his headphones and leaning over Agent Chen’s glowing monitor.
“We got a 90% accurate geographical triangulation before he dropped the proxy connection,” Agent Chen replied, tapping her screen to enlarge a localized map.
“The signal originated from a public payphone kiosk located at a closed gas station two miles north of St. Jude’s Church in downtown Denver.”
“He isn't running to Canada; he is staging his tactical position near the church right now, exactly as we predicted.”
David looked at me, his face pale with concern as he saw the residual terror lingering in my eyes after hearing Miller's voice.
“How did he know about the lace collar on your wedding dress, Sarah?” David asked quietly, his hands clenching into fists at his sides.
“Only you, your mother, and the seamstress at the bridal boutique knew what that dress looked like inside the garment bag.”
Before I could answer, one of the U.S. Marshals stationed at the front tactical window of the cabin turned around with his rifle raised.
“We have an anomaly on the perimeter perimeter sensors,” the Marshal announced, his voice tense and authoritative.
“Motion detector sector four—that’s the eastern tree line approximately two hundred yards from our exterior perimeter fence—just tripped twice.”
Agent Harrison drew his Glock service weapon from his hip holster, signaling for his team to extinguish all interior lights in the log cabin.
We were plunged into total darkness, the only illumination coming from the red LED indicators on the satellite communication equipment.
“Marshal Davis, activate the high-definition infrared exterior cameras on monitor three,” Harrison commanded, stepping back into the shadows near the brick fireplace.
The large flat-screen television above the fireplace flickered to life, displaying a ghostly, green-and-black thermal imaging view of the snow-covered pine forest outside.
Through the blowing blizzard snow, we could clearly see the heat signature of a large elk moving slowly through the dense brush near the fence line.
We all let out a collective, ragged sigh of relief, realizing that a wandering wild animal had tripped the sensitive perimeter motion sensors.
“Stand down, it’s just local wildlife moving through the timber,” Marshal Davis said, lowering his rifle barrel toward the floor.
Suddenly, Agent Chen gasped aloud from her dark corner by the communication desk, her face glowing eerily in the blue light of her laptop screen.
“Agent Harrison... look at our internal network security logs,” she whispered, her fingers shaking as she pointed to a flashing red warning icon on her desktop.
“Someone just attempted to hack into our local satellite encrypted router using a brute-force wireless decryption algorithm.”
“Where is the RF signal originating from?” Harrison snapped, moving instantly to her side with his weapon ready at his chest.
“The wireless signal isn't coming from the tree line two hundred yards away,” Agent Chen said, her voice dropping into a horrified whisper.
“The signal strength is sitting at maximum dBm... which means the transmitting device is located somewhere within fifty feet of this cabin.”
A cold, paralyzing terror washed over me as I realized the horrifying tactical truth of what was happening outside in the blizzard.
The wandering elk on the thermal camera was just a biological decoy intended to distract our attention toward the eastern tree line.
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While our armed guards were looking at the monitor, Gregory Alan Miller had slipped through the blinding snowstorm and breached the safehouse perimeter.
He wasn't waiting for us at St. Jude’s Church tomorrow afternoon—he was right outside our walls tonight.
